3o6 Memorial of George Bnncii (Joode. 



may be familiar to Ivnglish readers, Init perhaps not wholly so. I hope they do not 

 know, for example, how much we deserve, as compared with other nations, the 

 caustic strictures and lectures of Mr. Adams, who really gives us no quarter, being 

 resolved not to spoil the child by sparing the rod, but rather to provoke us to find a 

 remedy for the evils he describes. You yourself adverted, not long since, to the state 

 of things among us, but only in general terms. The facts are these:— They have a 

 small Observatory in process of erection at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for the use of the 

 University in that place. Professor Hopkins, of Williams' College, Massachusetts, 

 has a little establishment of the sort, and this is about all in that vState,-all in New 

 England ! The only other establishment in the United States, known to me, is that 

 in the Western Reserve College, Ohio, under the charge of Professor Loomis. 

 Nothing of the kind at oxir national seat of government, or anywhere near it! 

 Even Harvard University, "with all its antiquity, revenue, science, and renown," 

 has thus far failed, though it appears.that they are breaking ground at Cambridge; 

 a house or houses having been purchased and fitted up, and one of our "savans" is 

 already engaged in a series of magnetic and other observations. Now, how stands 

 the case on your side the water? Why, in the British islands alone, there are observ- 

 atories at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford— at Edinburgh and Glasgow, 

 in Scotland— and at Dul)lin and Armagh, in Ireland,— all receiving some patronage 

 from the government— to say nothing of an observatory at the Cape of Good Hope; 

 or of the establishments on the various remote and widely separated dependencies 

 of the British Empire, including Van Diemen's Land, for the furnishing of which, 

 we understand, arrangements have been made, in connexion with Captain Ross's 

 expedition. In France, I believe, the provision is not less ample. On this part of 

 the subject, Mr. Adams merely remarks, that the history of the Royal Observatory of 

 that country would show the benefits conferred on mankind by the slightest notice 

 bestowed by the rulers on the pursuit of knowledge: and that "the names of the 

 four Cassinis would range in honourable distinction by the side of Flamsteed, Brad- 

 ley, and Maskelyne." 



Special reference is of course made to Greenwich, and Mr. Adams takes nuich 

 pains to show how much that institution has done for science and for man. After 

 recapitulating how by preserving ob.servations we are indebted for a fixed standard for 

 the measurement of iiuic, — how, by the same science, man has acquired, so far as he 

 possesses it, a standard for the measurement of space, — \\& observes, that the minutest 

 of these observations contribute to the "increase and diffusion of knowledge" (the 

 expressed object in Smitlison's bequest) . As to the more brilliant, we are reminded of 

 an observation of Voltaire, that if the whole human race could be assembled from 

 the creation of man to his time, in the gradation of genius, Isaac Ncivton ivoidd 

 stand at their head; and the discoveries of Newton were the results of calculations, 

 founded on the observations of others— of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and 

 I'lamsteed. Greenwich has been considered rather an expensive establishment 

 (among us), but Mr. Adams shows that, though costly, it has not 1)een profitless. 

 Not to enter further into details of European countries, it appears that there are 

 about one hundred and twenty Observatories in continental Europe; and that the 

 most magnificent of them all has been lately founded by the Czar in the vicinity 

 of his capital;— an enterprise sufficiently glorious, Mr. Adams observes, for the 

 sovereign of such an empire; but the merit of which is vastly enhanced by the fact 

 of its being undertaken and accomplished in such a latitude and climate:— " a region 

 so near the pole, that it offers to the inspection of the human eye only a scanty por- 

 tion of the northern hemisphere, with an atmosphere so chilled with cold and 

 obscured with vapours, that it yields scarcely sixty days in the year when observa- 

 tion of the heavenly bodies is practicable." This last fact, it nmst be allowed, is 

 rather an aggravation, or ought to be, to us republicans, some among whom affect 

 to be special despisers of the bigoted Nicholas, and all his works. It seems, too, that 

 Mcheinet ^lli has come forward as the patron of philosophical inquiry. 



